Thirty organisations have written to the prime minister calling for a five-point recovery plan to help reduce the long-term impact of coronavirus on the mental health of young people – “both now and in the future”.  The letter is signed by Young Minds, Barnardo’s, Place2Be and Beat, as well as teacher unions and medical groups such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. It calls for a…
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Nine unions, including the National Education Union and the National Association of Headteachers, who represent hundreds of thousands of education practitioners in the UK have warned that the government has a “lack of understanding” about the dangers of coronavirus spreading within the school setting and wider community. School leaders believe that 1st June is too early for schools to re-open and have urged the government to step back from plans, saying that they were not consulted…
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Teacher unions in the UK and Ireland have warned leaders of a “very real risk of creating a spike in the transmission of the virus by a premature opening of schools”. A letter, sent by the British and Irish Group of Teacher Unions (BIGTU) to education ministers in all five nations on behalf of almost 1 million teachers and education staff, calls for test and trace measures to be fully operational before reopening. It also called for “significant…
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Local authorities are anticipating a surge in the number of child protection referrals when schools reopen in the UK. Such referrals have decreased by more than 50 percent in some areas of England, as many vulnerable children are not in contact with teachers or youth workers and abuse and neglect goes unnoticed at home. More than 1.5 million children in England live in families where one parent or carer has a severe mental health problem,…
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Schools in Denmark and China have reopened, but day-to-day school life is remarkably different as the threat of COVID19 still remains. In Denmark, class times and breaks are being staggered to avoid too many people in one place, and class sizes have been reduced by splitting into two groups. Pupils are also being taught in a more traditional way such as sitting separately in front of the teacher rather than working in small groups or…
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New data from the Department for Education has revealed that only 29,000 at-risk children attended school in England the week before Easter, compared to 723,000 children who were known to Social Services in 2019. The small take-up of emergency schooling has raised concerns that vulnerable children are facing increased danger whilst living in lockdown, potentially being exposed to what Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, describes as a “cocktail of risks”, including domestic violence, poverty and parents with drug…
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At a recent teachers’ conference in Birmingham, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that school closures would create widespread disruption, not least for key workers such as medical staff, and that children were probably safer at school. Leaders of Primary and Secondary schools agreed, believing it was best to try and keep a normal schedule amidst the coronavirus outbreak. However staff sickness has put pressure on schools, and from today, schools will now shut their doors to…
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This week is Child Mental Health Week in the UK, set up by children’s mental health charity Place2Be, the week shines a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s mental health. With 3 children in every classroom in the UK now presenting with a diagnosable mental health problem, this year’s theme is Find your Brave.  To coincide with the week, reading charity The Reading Agency supported by Libraries Connected has launched a booklist to support children’s mental…
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Barbie and Magnus spoke about findings from the IKEA Kids Advisory Panel at the MRS Conference today. For the last 2 years we have run a panel with children in China, Germany and the UK. Using an app, children respond with pictures and film in response to our monthly tasks. Through this we have asked kids to design lighting (presented to the Kids’ Conference in 2018), beds, desks, storage solutions, all of which have made…
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A recent study published in the journal BMJ Open finds there has been an increase in the number of children aged 8-12 diagnosed with anorexia. The report found that roughly 3.2 children per 100,000 were thought to have an eating disorder across the UK and Ireland, compared to just 1.5 to 2.1 distinguishable cases in 2006. Findings were based on research with child and adolescent psychologists, who were asked to recount the number of anorexia…
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